Try a Little Tenderness

I'm sure you've all heard the reading about the Pharisee and the publican. The Pharisee sits there in church and thinks about all the good things he's done, and how glad he is that he's not like "those people." And then there's the publican ("those people") who sits there and says, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Well I have to admit that, while I never actually believed that I fit the publican's role in the story better than the Pharisee, I never thought I was the Pharisee. Nobody does, right? I just wasn't conscious of having done a whole lot wrong. This is otherwise known as "confession amnesia." If you wait to do your Examination until you're sitting there waiting for the confessional, you're sunk, because you suddenly become the most holy person in the world and you can't remember anything you did wrong.

Now I know I'm the Pharisee. And you can all witness to the proof. If you scroll down, you can find a post called Be Nice to Knockers, in which I piously relate an incident about somebody who came to my house, and how I actually listened to him and treated him like a human being. I said that the proof of how you're living the Gospel is in how you treat these unexpected (often intrusive) interludes with people you don't know who badly want you to do something you have absolutely no desire to do.

Like answering a telephone survey. This, my friends, is my Achilles heel. Since they're not actually standing on my property, I can treat them like garbage. Just yesterday I kept getting these calls, which I was trying to dodge with caller ID, anwering machine, voice mail, you name it. They called at least 6 times. Each time, as I realized it was Them, I got more and more incensed. I fumed about my privacy, my time, my rights--until I finally picked up the phone and really gave it to the unfortunate person on the other end with both barrels. I complained that this was harrassment, and I insisted that they take my number off their list this minute. "I know you're a real person and I know it's a sucky job, but I have absolutely no desire to participate, and I can't take any more interruptions!!" The person, whose name was Valerie, accepted my request and promised to do so. The calls ceased.

Now, to my mind a few months ago, there would have been no moral problem with this. But now, there is. How can it be? Because this wasn't the only time. A few weeks ago, my husband was cooking breakfast on a Saturday morning. The phone rang, and my husband began chatting with the caller in his usual friendly way, but I could tell from his half of the conversation that it was one of these survey calls. I thought about how, out of the few days of the month my husband is actually home, my time with him was being stolen away by one of these heartless corporations who sucked people's time out the window for no more exalted a purpose than to advance consumerism. I grabbed the phone out of his hand, told the person on the other end that this was wasting our limited time together, that we were not interested, and never to call us again. I never listened--I did not hear the caller even say one word.

Then I actually took some of my own advice and began to read the diary of St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul. Now she's a nun, so there's not much that she can do wrong, right? I mean, why is she so miserable? Because God showed her the depth of the sin in her soul, and how even the slightest imperfection separates us from God. This is divine knowledge, the opposite of confession amnesia. It really made me think. If this nun can be miserable about the state of her own soul, and she's dedicated her life completely to God, what state is my soul in? Have I ever really thought about it? Had I ever considered asking God to show me? Suddenly, there was no question of blowing off these insights. Yes, she received them as personal revelation (which is not dogma, and therefore not technically binding), but by reading her diary I receive them too. Jesus told her that that was what her diary was designed to do.

There is a real danger to reading about the saints. I have heard it said that we are only responsible to God for what we know, but once you open yourself to learning more about faith and spirituality, you have to act on what you've learned. You can either accept it or reject it. And if you reject it, you could be rejecting the truths of God, things that He wants you to see. Now, if you honestly read something and ponder it and can then put it away with an absolutely clear conscience, you are probably OK. That's what happened to me with the headcoverings-all-the-time idea. I couldn't reject headcovering in church with a completely clear conscience, however. So I had to act on it. That's the "danger"--that you might have to change something about your life based on what you have learned.

That's why blowing off these callers the way I did was wrong. I hid behind anonymity, and used my anger to sin. I spoke words of wrath--words that could seriously hurt somebody. When I think about how I would feel if I had to do that job all day--and be treated in such a way as I treated these callers, I thought that if somebody would just be decent to me and give me the dignity of being able to do my job--then that would be a kindness. And one act of kindness does more to spread the Gospel than thousands of words shouted from a soapbox. That's what the lives of the saints are about. Showing tenderness to people that are treated like they're less than human. Is this easy for me to accept? No, I am still thinking this one through. But the answer is staring me in the face. Who did Jesus spend time with? The upper class? The middle class? The respectable people? No, he hung out with the people that no one else wanted to have anything to do with.

Today I guess that group would include telemarketers, too.


NOTE: Dear readers, I have really enjoyed this blog but consider it to be on probation status. Thanks to all who may have comented on the post A Gentle Metaphorphosis--but I have not checked for comments on that post and will not be reading them. It was just too personal. But thank you for your thoughts. I just don't know if God wants me to use this online "soapbox." So posts may be sporadic for awhile.